State Has Its Eye on Utilities’ Sierra Lands

Out of the energy morass the state may pluck a singular prize--more than 160,000 acres of Sierra Nevada wild lands laced with blue-ribbon trout streams, alpine lakes, whitewater rivers and old-growth forest.

The pockets of land surrounding widely scattered hydroelectric plants along California’s jagged spine have for decades been managed by utilities almost as if they were public, open for recreation and protected from development or extensive timber cutting.

Deregulation of the private electricity industry cleared the way for them to be sold, raising fears that relatively undisturbed pieces of the Sierra could be heavily logged and carved into vacation-home lots.

Now the lands--each piece composing part of a watershed surrounding a powerhouse or lake--have become a bargaining chip in the state’s energy negotiations. And environmentalists see a chance to protect precious property that generations of Californians have retreated to for fishing, hiking and boating.

“It is difficult to imagine passing this up,” said Laurie Wayburn, president of the Pacific Forest Trust.

As part of his rescue plan for Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison, Gov. Gray Davis is proposing that the two private utilities give the state “conservation easements,” in effect giving up development rights for the land.

One of the companies has already agreed. Last week Davis said Edison would grant the state a 99-year easement on 20,000 acres in the southern and eastern Sierra as part of a tentative, $2.76-billion pact to sell the utility’s transmission lines to the state.

The governor is still pursuing a transmission-line deal, including a conservation agreement, with PG&E.; Key to any resolution of California’s power problems, the state’s biggest utility owns the bulk of the watershed lands, about 140,000 acres from Redding to Bakersfield. Neither utility is commenting on the negotiations.

Many environmentalists would like Davis to go beyond easements and place the watershed lands under direct public ownership--a suggestion some rural county officials are decrying.

The possibility of PG&E; shedding tens of thousands of acres of Sierra wild lands first arose after deregulation in 1996. The utility began selling its generating plants and applied to the state Public Utilities Commission to auction off its hydroelectric facilities and adjacent watershed properties. The move rang alarm bells not only in environmental circles but at the U.S. Forest Service.

In documents and testimony filed with the PUC, the Forest Service expressed grave concerns about PG&E;’s divestiture plans, which involve lands bordering portions of nine national forests in California. Officials said auctioning off the property could lead to development that would disrupt animal habitats, hurt water quality and interfere with management of adjacent national forest land.

As an example of the allure the PG&E; tracts hold for developers, Carol Efird, a Forest Service lands and recreation specialist, cited 26,000 acres near the Tahoe National Forest, one of the most heavily used federal forests in the country. The watershed land is near a major highway, Interstate 80, has two rivers running through it, and 21 lakes popular with anglers and boaters.

“The high mountain lakes on PG&E; land could be particularly attractive to people wanting a mountain residence,” Efird told commissioners at a hearing last year, worrying that national forest land would essentially become a backyard for vacation homes.

Tim Duane, a UC Berkeley associate professor of environmental planning and policy who also works for the PUC, said a draft environmental report on the proposed divestiture indicated that as many as 10,000 homes could be developed on the PG&E; acreage.

The report further warned of the possibility of increased logging and road building that could harm fisheries and wildlife habitat. “The proposed auction would have led to quite a few adverse impacts,” Duane said.

After the energy crisis reached a boil late last year, the Legislature passed a bill stopping the utilities from selling any more assets, including the hydroelectric facilities and adjacent lands.

That has not calmed fears about the watershed properties. Even if the utilities remain in control of the tracts, the companies’ financial woes probably would increase pressure to exploit the holdings through some development and increased logging.

“The way the lands have been managed in the past may have relatively little to do with the way they are managed in the future,” said Guy Phillips, chief consultant to Assemblyman Fred Keeley (D-Boulder Creek). Keeley has for several years pushed for state acquisition of the entire hydroelectric system. Concerned that even easements could be written to allow some development, many conservationists favor public ownership of the watershed tracts.

“We’ve pressed for outright acquisition or an option to buy or option for permanent easements,” said Nancy Ryan, a consulting economist for Environmental Defense.

In a letter to Davis on Thursday, U.S. Forest Service regional forester Bradley E. Powell also encouraged California to acquire the land outright, offering to buy it from the state and manage it as well.

Ryan and others also fault the tentative Edison easement for not being permanent. “Ninety-nine years is not forever,” Ryan said. “Ninety-nine years from now there could be a lot of new development pressures.”

Davis press secretary Steven Maviglio said a 99-year term was chosen because it is not uncommon in conservation circles and because “We don’t know where we’re going to be in 99 years in terms of energy.”

Still, he said the governor has not ruled out state ownership of the PG&E; lands, which are considered the most valuable from a recreational and environmental standpoint.

The push for public ownership has prompted grumbling at the Regional Council of Rural Counties. Organization officials said that though their members want to keep the watershed lands in recreational use, they don’t want to lose local control and property taxes.

“Conservation groups are proposing a government-backed land grab that would be exempt from local land-use practices or community input,” council Vice President Wesley Lujan wrote in a letter to the governor this week.

Ownership proponents said the counties could be given payments in lieu of taxes. In his letter to Davis on Thursday, Forest Service official Powell said the agency could compensate counties for tax revenue losses.

And not all county officials are groaning. Nevada County Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Elizabeth Martin said it is vital that the watershed lands be protected, whether through easements or state possession.

“If the people of California are going to spend billions bailing out these utilities, we should get something real. And there’s nothing more real than land and water,” she said.

Some of the oldest hydroelectric facilities in California are in her county, which contains 14,000 acres of PG&E; property. The forest land and reservoirs annually draw tens of thousands of visitors who camp and patronize hotels and shops. “They’re very important tourist attractions,” Martin said.

If vacation homes or resorts spring up around the lakes, their character will change and their public appeal diminish, she said. “It’s not the same thing to look over and see a satellite dish.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Power Network Lands

Gov. Gray Davis has proposed that the state obtain conservation easements protecting environmentally valuable watershed lands owned by Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison. The two troubled private utilities own more than 160,000 acres adjacent to their hydropower facilities scattered along the length of the Sierra Nevada. The bulk of the land belongs to PG&E;, which runs the largest private hydropower system in the nation. The Edison land is near June Lake, Shaver Lake and Lake Edison.